👋 Welcome back to AI for SME Success, your weekly dose of practical AI insights that matter to small businesses.
This week: OpenAI shut down Sora, and Google’s timing couldn’t be better as they just launched a tool to migrate your AI assets straight to Gemini. Claude can now run your computer: assign tasks from your phone, and it opens apps, navigates your browser, and fills spreadsheets, no coding required. “Human-Made” is becoming a premium signal, with at least eight competing certification bodies now offering labels. And we look at a fascinating experiment where Claude had full autonomous control of a tomato plant, and what it tells us about the physical tasks small businesses can outsource to AI.
🎬 Sora Is Gone. Google Made It Easy to Shift.
OpenAI announced it is shutting down the standalone Sora app, and Disney is walking away from a deal that would have brought characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars to the platform, along with a planned $1 billion investment.
Why did Sora fail?
A few overlapping reasons, According to Deeper Insights, video generation is extraordinarily expensive in GPU power; downloads peaked at over 3.3 million in November 2025 but dropped to about 1.1 million by February 2026. In-app purchases generated only $2.1 million, far too little to justify costs for a company burning cash ahead of a potential IPO. Venture Beats points out that OpenAI wants to redirect compute to more profitable territory, including robotics and physical-world problem solving.
Sora users can now switch to either Google Veo/Gemini or smaller competitors like Kling AI, Runway, Pika Labs, and Luma Dream Machine. Deeper Insights
Takeaways: Vendor risk is real. A tool with 3M+ downloads and a billion-dollar Disney partnership was gone in six months. Don’t build dependency on a single tool. If you train your AI on your brand voice, use files that can be easily transferred to another tool.
Coincidentally (or not) Google just announced a new capability to migrate your AI memories, preferences, and past chats directly to Gemini, so you can pick up exactly where you left off.
If you spent months training Sora on your brand voice, specific shot styles, or complex prompt structures, here’s how to transition to Gemini:
- Open Settings in Gemini and copy the prompt you found there.
- Go to your previous AI platform and paste the prompt to export your memory.
- Paste the exported memory into Gemini’s memory field and click Add Memory to save it.
🪄Claude Can Now Run Your Computer
This week, Anthropic shipped one of its biggest updates yet.
Claude Computer Use lets Claude complete tasks directly on your computer. Pair your Mac and phone via Dispatch, assign a task from your phone, and Claude opens your apps, navigates your browser, and fills in spreadsheets, anything you’d normally do sitting at your desk. Available now for Pro and Max plans, macOS only.
Claude isn’t alone in this race. OpenAI launched GPT-5.4 on March 5 with built-in computer use capabilities, and Google released Gemini 2.5 Computer Use in October. The key difference for non-technical users: Claude is the most accessible out of the box. No coding required, no API setup, just a Pro subscription and a Mac. ChatGPT’s agent mode performs better in the browser; Gemini’s computer use remains largely a developer tool requiring technical setup.
Claude Computer Use also competes with OpenClaw, a viral open-source AI agent that failed security audits. Claude runs within Anthropic’s managed infrastructure and asks permission before every action, which is a much safer choice for small businesses.
To try it: Start with a low-stakes recurring tasks like invoices renamed by clients or a weekly metrics pull. Hold off on anything involving sensitive business data for now.
🏷️Human-Made Is the New Premium
Whether you use AI or you don’t, make it known to your customers.
According to a recent piece in Mindstream, terms like “Human-Made,” “Proudly Human,” and “AI-Free” are now becoming the new premium signals, similar to “Organic,” “Designed in California,” or “Hand-Crafted.”
There’s one catch: there’s no single definition of what “AI-free” actually means. BBC News found at least eight different groups racing to build these labels.
Some, like no-ai-icon.com and ai-free.io, issue badges with little to no verification, for free or a small fee. Others, like AIFreeCert, run a stricter auditing process and charge accordingly.
Not By AI will issue a badge when at least 90% of a product was created by humans, a standard they call “the 90% Rule.”
🍅Can AI Grow a Tomato Plant?
Developer Martin DeVido of Boise, built a sealed “Sol Biodome”, a high-tech grow box housing a single tomato plant called Sol. Using an Arduino microcontroller, 13 environmental sensors, a grow light, heat mat, fan, water pump, and a camera, he handed full control to Anthropic’s Claude with zero human backup.
Every 30 minutes, Claude checked temperature, humidity, CO₂, and soil moisture, then decided when to turn on the grow light, heat mat, fan, or water pump. It also monitored the plant visually through the camera, logging observations like “healthy bushy foliage, turgid leaves, Sol looks great.”
According to the experiment description published by Datackathon, the real test came on day 34, when a bug in the Arduino microcontroller caused a critical failure, shutting down lighting, heating, and airflow. Claude detected the issue, prioritized restarting heat and airflow first, and stabilized the plant within minutes.
After 100 days, the plant thrived and fruited. Watch it live at autoncorp.com/biodome
What operations can you outsource to AI?
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Also, I’d love to hear your feedback, questions, or topic suggestions at natalia@nataliabrattan.com.
See you next week,
Natalia